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Sports » rec.running » Re: triathons or adventure racing is better for you than running marathons
| Re: triathons or adventure racing is better for you than running marathons [message #1074044] |
Tue, 11 July 2006 13:06 |
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lanceandrew [at] aol.com wrote:
> I'm an emotional & psychological runner.
You can say that again:-)
> This is=
a highly
> controversial subject on this ng however this race would be good for me
> as I grew up in this area, as a kid used to bike and walk up to Lake
> Chabot from MacAruthur Blvd in San Leandro and fish, etc. In sum, I
> would feel a connection with the land, the course, that dates back to
> the 70's. That means something to me & would inspire me to endure.
> Recovering from injury is disciplining me to run slow.
Don't you think it should be disciplining to other things as well? I
believe I can appreciate the pull that race has on you, but life in
general and running in particular is still to a great extent about
making choices between mutually excluding things - and it might be more
emotionally and psychologically rewarding _in the long run_ to settle
for something that wouldn't perhaps be so rewarding in the immediate
future.
> I'm feeling great, clocked 78 miles last week...pushing it up to 90
> miles this week and I'm just gonna establish that 90 mpw base (in
> flats). When you run slow (75%) clocking 90-100 mpw does not strike
> as a tall order at all to me. (...)
As I understand it, you returned to running sometime in mid-June after
how many months on the injury list - and now you tell us you're already
up to 78 god damn miles! I do hope you're describing the wild, wild
running life of an entirely fictional alter ego:-)
It may be an easier and simpler affair to return from a muscle tear
than from many other injuries, but it may also be _too_ easy. You only
lose qualities that you don't train and it may not be unsurmountable
difficult to keep training all of the necessary qualities also while
you're reduced to alternative training, but as a rule it takes the
mindset of an elite athlete to do it well. Are you really sure you've
not only taked the talk but walked the walk, so to speak, during those
weeks?
Please remember: it usually takes up to five weeks for the first
_observed_ signs of any overtraining injury to appear; i.e. it's always
too late, chuck, when one realizes the foolishness of one's ways.
It's absolutely true that logging 90+ miles need not be such a big deal
for a 40+ runner - but it's never a bad thing to ask oneself whether
every last mile of that handsome amount is actually producing any
intended training result and whether some of those miles might even be
counterproductive.
It's indeed not all that difficult to run about 12 hrs per week; 1.5
hrs on five, 2.0 hrs on one and 2.5 hrs on one day would do it nicely -
and if you're doing doubles, you may even get to keep bragging rights
to never doing any long (>1.5 hrs) runs. And you'll quite possibly feel
great, at least for the first one or two, maybe even five weeks - it's
only after that when you can be sure that your (early middle-aged)
ability to recover, considering the amount of rest you're able to get
(and willing to give yourself) and the amount of stress you have in
your daily life, is up to the task your legs now appear to be able to
take.
(A world class marathoner once pointed out that even a completely
untrained person can seek to copy the sleeping habits of an elite
athlete without the lest bit of risk of injury or illness, but that's
about it...)
It could well be that you are the kind of guy who'll always - even with
perfect hindsight - will say to himself "It's ten times better to have
tried 110% and failed time and time again than to have done 90% and
reached 95% of my full potential!" or something to that extent - but as
I see things from here, the light you're seeing is that of the
proverbial freight train coming at you in a tunnel.
If you don't positively disagree with me on that, you still have time
to turn back and get the hell out of there!
Anders
PS Since you let yourself slip a little bit into sheer chatter about
yourself (and apparently let us know that the beginning of the end of
the American real estate boom is in sight), I'll share a small story
with you:
Years ago, when everyone had just sighed with relief that the Eighties
were over, I came upon what would still be (to me and most other
people) a huge pile of money. Since I was a simple country boy and a
shy young man at heart, I couldn't manage to part with much of it
through big spending and I had to invest it wisely. This was the time
when a credit bubble (which had, naturally enough, followed bank
deregulation) had just burst and the early Nineties recession had hit
Finland rather hard and both the real estate and the stock markets had
taken a dive, so it wasn't rocket science to find bargains on either.
So what I did was I bought a large house, which w=E9nt way beyond my
needs (other than trying to prove something to my father), but at that
price it was a steal. With the rest of my bonanza I invested modestly
but very much in all-eggs-in-one-basket kind of way in Nokia, which at
that point in time was doing poorly due to heavy European investments
in computer and television manufacturing under the previous GM and a
very unfunctional and incompetent two-headed current management. The
former were sold to Asian companies and the latter were given golden
parachutes and the rest, as thay say, is history - and the value of the
stock rose almost 200-fold.
The moral of the story is that I now live in a nice house, which - if I
look at it that way, and I cannot say I never do - ended up. less than
ten years later, costing about the same as, say, Madonna's house in
Florida.
So, Lance, are you really sure you want to risk doing something (very,
very loosely) similar with your running?:-)
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| Re: triathons or adventure racing is better for you than running marathons [message #1074050 ] |
Tue, 11 July 2006 15:59 |
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> As I understand it, you returned to running sometime in mid-June after
> how many months on the injury list
3rd week of June, Donovan saw me & my girlfriend in fact in Central
Park running, as was he, and we said "hey". I was injured for 32 of
the previous 35 weeks, unable to run at all :(
- and now you tell us you're already
> up to 78 god damn miles!
yes but that was last week, this week i will clock 90.
> So, Lance, are you really sure you want to risk doing something (very,
> very loosely) similar with your running?:-)
Easy answer, "yes". Most published running & training lore is soft
peddled, dumbed down, for broad scale public consumption, your average
adult athlete. Our capacities, abilities, and talents are not equal.
Some of us can function fine with no impairing / fatigue on 5 hours
sleep, some cannot. Our mental & physically capacities vary.
I went to school in New Hampshire where the saying is, "Live Free or
Die Trying". Of course rapper 50 Cent ripped off this New Hampshire
line with his album 'Get Rich or Die Trying". Perhaps we can agree
on the middle ground between these two and I defer to Lord Tennyson,
"I hold it true, whatever befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'tis
better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
The moments wherein we're striding as we run are perhaps acts of
self-love. I am ready to die trying (become injured) in the pursuit of
unaccomplished goals as a runner.
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| Re: triathons or adventure racing is better for you than running marathons [message #1074058 ] |
Tue, 11 July 2006 20:23 |
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<lanceandrew [at] aol.com> wrote in message
news:1152626383.632003.225380 [at] 75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> yes but that was last week, this week i will clock 90.
We gotta give Lance credit for big cajones. I really do hope he is over
the hump and back into full training so we can see if his true potential
matches his verbal hubris. With 90 miles a week he should be able to
get past using his chubby BMI as a reason for under-performing. The
weight should be melting away and approaching the stature of a fleet
Kenyan. ;)
Yo daddy,
-Doug
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